6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Luke and Kate are co-workers at a Chicago brewery, where they spend their days drinking and flirting. They're perfect for each other, except that they're both in relationships. Luke is in the midst of marriage talks with his girlfriend of six years, Kate is playing it cool with her music producer boyfriend Chris. But you know what makes the line between "friends" and "more than friends" really blurry? Beer.
Starring: Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, Ron Livingston, Ti WestRomance | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
BD-Live
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Writer/director Joe Swanberg's film Drinking Buddies left me with a lot of thoughts, but one of them was how useless the term "mumblecore" cinema has become. The so-called "godfather" of the movement, Andrew Bujalski, has denied both that it exists and that he makes "mumblecore" films. On the commentary track for Drinking Buddies, Swanberg says that he was trying to make the kind of low-budget drama that the studios used to make in the Sixties and Seventies, citing Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) as a direct inspiration. European filmmakers still make low-budget, character-driven films, and no one feels the need to relegate them to a box with a dismissive label (although I suppose that, for some, just calling them "European" may be enough). Fish Tank and Weekend, to name two recent examples from the U.K., could just as easily qualify as "mumblecore" as Drinking Buddies. And yes, I deliberately chose two films from the Criterion Collection; that's the point. The British connection is relevant in another regard, in that Swanberg's method resembles that of the great English director Mike Leigh, although Swanberg has a long way to go before he manages to assemble the amazing company of actors on whom Leigh has been reliably drawing for many years now. His story is written in advance, but none of the dialogue is scripted. The actors improvise according to a structure worked out in advance with the director, and they develop their own characters. Drinking Buddies was the most elaborately planned of Swanberg's films to date, because it is set in the world of "craft beer" brewing and much of it was shot in a functioning brewery, whose staff served as extras. Filming had to be coordinated with the brewery's operations, so that the crew had to know the scene's action in detail, even if the actors were inventing the dialogue on the spot. The result was a kind of focused, edgy energy that contributes immeasurably to Swanberg's tale of two couples who find themselves at crossroads in their relationships.
Drinking Buddies was shot with a Red camera by Ben Richardson, who had just completed his award-winning cinematography for Beasts of the Southern Wild. Swanberg is lavish in his praise for Richardson's grasp of his improvisational style of working, which required a lot of handheld camerawork that Richardson managed so smoothly that you're rarely aware of the operator's presence. (No "shakycam" here.) With post-production completed on a digital intermediate, Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced from digital files. The image is clean, noiseless and detailed, with excellent blacks and a naturalistic color palette that is particularly good at reproducing the gleaming brewery tanks and the spotless, well-maintained offices of Revolution Brewing. The browns and greens of the woods surrounding the cabin on the lake are beautiful to look at it, and the slightly frayed cabin interior has an appropriately faded look. There are no artifacts of any kind, and the average bitrate of 24.97 is more than adequate given the nature of the film, which involves primarily scenes of conversation.
Drinking Buddies' original 5.1 mix is presented as lossless DTS-HD MA, but it's not a fancy mix, nor should it be. This is a drama about character interactions, and except for some minor environmental ambiance, there is little for the surrounds to add. The dialogue is clear, and the music is a collection of songs assembled by music supervisor Chris Swanson. None of them were familiar to me, but they all fit the mood of the film perfectly.
It may be impossible to banish the term "mumblecore" from the vocabulary of film fans, to say nothing of reviewers (we are, by nature, addicted to categories), but a film like Drinking Buddies serves as a reminder that such labels don't tell us much. A good film is always more interesting and offers more substance than the category or genre to which it may appear on the surface to belong. Drinking Buddies is such a film. Highly recommended.
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Lucía y el sexo | Unrated Director's Cut
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